Spoilers There will never be Ferengi in DISCO

Hmmm...

... nah. Not worth the time.

 

I’ve had better conversations with cats.

 

oooooooor...the Orions are what the Orions always were, it's just that their socioeconomic importance in the Galaxy increased over the last 9 centuries

 

I do think it was a missed opportunity to not make the Ferengi the third leg of the Emerald Chain. I had seen fan speculation that the three buttons on their uniforms could stand for three groups that led the Chain. I wish that had been the case (and it still might be) and the Ferengi would've been a no brainer for the third choice. DISCO could've made good on finally making the Ferengi the threat they were originally envisioned to be for TNG.

 

Because it would be very much American culture right now: zero sum. The story would be women can't succeed without the destruction of men. America is all about extinguishing the alternative view. And what you would do is change a patriarchy for a matriarchy. You've changed one bad situation for another.

It would have been more interesting to see the old characters go through the change, Quark et al. And they sort of did did that. Moogie led the way. She was smart, she knew her stuff... she showed the men up through prowess for and ingenuity. Pel too. Rom become Nagus. I felt like the change was occuring, and the implication was a few years down the road it'd be like women driving cars in Saudi Arabia. The start of a long but hopefully upward journey.

Seeing new, random Ferengi going through the change... of a story from hundreds of years ago. I don't see the dramatic driver. Men now can't drive cars and women can... nah...

 

Fitting for the Ferengi's origins.

 

I hope that if they ever do bring back the Ferengi, they’ve gone full communist.

 

Personally, I found myself equating the Emerald Chain to more of a combination of the East India Company and modern-day mega-corporations, in terms of it being essentially a business that seized the power of the state once the state was weakened.

I mean, the "Ferengi as buffoons" thing really has its origins in "The Last Outpost." The performances the actors playing the Ferengi were directed to give were clearly supposed to be stylized so as to depict the Ferengi as being very alien to Human sensibilities, but the performances were so stylized that they came across as humorous. Every subsequent appearance of the Ferengi has basically been a reaction to that first episode undermining the entire concept of "dangerous capitalist." The Ferengi as depicted in DS9 were basically Ira Steven Behr's attempts to go with the idea that they're humorous, but to reintroduce more serious subtexts as well.

1) Star Trek has a long history of depicting alien cultures as monolithic and aliens characters' behavior as being deterministic on the basis of their biology. Both of these choices are lazy and frankly would constitute stereotyping if these were real cultures instead of fictional alien cultures. It is a good thing when Star Trek depicts aliens as having a variety of behaviors, personalities, and cultural values.

2) "Orion culture" has barely ever been explored, so frankly it's silly to pretend there's any contradiction between Tendi's personality and Orion culture. We've had basically two episodes that scratched the surface of Orion culture up until now -- "The Borderland, where we see an Orion Syndicate slave market far from the territory of any established government, and "Bound," which is an incredibly misogynistic episode whose one revelation about Orion society was so ridiculous and frankly misogynistic that it has been, and ought to continue to be, ignored by all subsequent productions. Even with Osyraa this season, we don't actually know much about Orion culture proper, just the Emerald Chain.

There's plenty of point in discussing fictional cultures, but if we're going to be realistic in our depiction of fictional cultures, it's really important not to pretend that alien cultures would be "planets of hats." Real cultures are not monolithic -- they're diverse, full of conflicting factions and beliefs, with different ideas about how core values ought to function. Star Trek does this well sometimes, too! Cardassian culture is well-done, for instance, and so is Vulcan culture -- lots of different factions and personalities at play with lots of different ideas about what it means to be "Cardassian" or "Vulcan." What's a mistake is to just be like, "Well, she was bubbly and not overtly sexual, so she wasn't being very Orion."

 

Unfortunately Star Trek has fallen in to that trap too.

 

Agreed, but I think modern Star Trek is much better at avoiding it than Berman-era Star Trek.

 

I completely agree. Berman era was way worse with it, especially Voyager. Even ENT did a better job than VOY.

 

They’re living Gene Roddenberry’s true dream of the future. They’re all commie nudist who live purely for sexual pleasure and the betterment of their species. They just lay around rubbing each other’s ears and gladly giving anything they have to offer to strangers. A kind species, visiting them is going to be weird as fuck, but they’re a kind species. Like if Ned Flanders ran an orgy.

 

I truly regret starting this conversation.......

 

We've created art. Don't fear it.

 

Totally agree, especially when Vulcan history and culture was fleshed out a bit further in Enterprise.

 

How do we know Ferenginar hasn’t taken to Rom’s reforms and become a bastion of progressivism?

 

I would LOVE socialist Ferengi.

"Rule of Equity #212..."

 

I definitely hope that if we run into them again, it's the People's Republic of Ferenginar.

 

The thing I like about that bit of their history is that by making first contact humans and Vulcans saved each other.